ARCENCPostings

Tuesday, July 25, 2017

Fwd: Memphis Museum work complete and new AERAgram online!

Memphis Open Air Museum renovations are complete!

We are excited to announce the completion of our work at the Memphis Open Air Museum. We've designed and installed 36 bilingual English/Arabic information panels, installed new lighting, painted the museum, and built a new children's area for local school children.

This work is part of a larger project to help revitalize tourism at Memphis, which also includes establishing a walking circuit of archaeological sites, publishing a catalog of the the objects in the museum, and producing a website that includes information for both tourists and researchers about the history of Memphis and its sites. This work has been done with the assistance of 77 Egyptian Ministry of Antiquities field school students who were trained in site management, cultural heritage planning and conservation, so that they can take their new knowledge back to their regional offices throughout Egypt.

Tourists reading the newly installed information panels overlooking the Ramesses II colossus, while workmen finish painting the inside of the Memphis Open Air Museum.

AERA receives two ARCE Antiquities Endowment Fund grants

We're pleased to announce we've received two grants from the American Research Center in Egypt (ARCE) that will help us take major steps forward in our research.

The first grant will help support an eight-week excavation field school in the Khentkawes Town (KKT) area of the Giza Plateau, where we plan to excavate the remains of one of the priestly quarters. This will be the first step in a three-part process of fieldwork, conservation-reconstruction, and publication done in concert with the Egyptian Ministry of Antiquities to help revitalize tourism at Giza.

The second grant will hep AERA archaeobotanist Dr. Claire Malleson conserve and make public the records of 28 years of our archaeobotanical investigations at the sites of Heit el-Ghurob and KKT. This unique dataset of macro-botanical remains potentially holds the key to understanding aspects of the development in agricultural and food-production systems that supported and enabled the major cultural changes in Egypt represented by the construction of the Pyramids.

AERAgram 16:2 now available online

While the most recent edition of our AERAgram is only available to AERA members, previous issues can be downloaded from our website. This includes the recently posted fall 2015 issue with the following articles:

Our members help make possible our excavations in Egypt, field school training, rescue archaeology, conservation, education and outreach. Members also receive printed copies of AERAgrams and annual reports as soon as they are published.